Via KurzweilAI.net — This research is not surprising in the least. If your avatar looks like you it stands to reason you’d act something akin to how you normally would. If your avatar has a dramatically different look than you, or is a different gender, species or even an alien life form it also stands to reason you’d be more likely to role-play the actions you think that character would exhibit.
Can avatars change the way we think and act? Physorg.com, Feb. 25, 2010 You are more likely to imitate the behavior of an avatar in real life if it looks like you, Jesse Fox, a researcher at the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, found in a study that used digital photographs of participants to create personalized avatar bodies.
Here’s the YouTube clip found at the link:
